


Like Kissing Flutterbugs

by Querel (Rednaelo)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Bloodplay, Flushed Romance | Matesprits, M/M, tentabulge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-28
Updated: 2012-03-28
Packaged: 2017-11-02 15:05:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/370315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rednaelo/pseuds/Querel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Karkat keeps getting accidentally injured at John’s sudden, jarring appearances.  But When John offers him an odd human remedy to his pain, steadily Karkat begins to come to grips with why the human’s presence is becoming so unsettling.</p><p>Prime Pairing #2 in Querel's Shipping Wall.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like Kissing Flutterbugs

**Author's Note:**

> I meant for this to be really fluffy and cute but it ended up being kinda kinky because that’s the kind of sicko I am. OTL I don’t think I did a very good job on the pacing, but this fic’s been stewing in me for a while, so I had to get it out. I may or may not go back and fix it later.
> 
> My background song of choice for the sexy parts is “Between Two Points” by The Glitch Mob, if you’d like some mood music.
> 
> Have fun. :3

Karkat wasn’t always an absolute dumbfuck.  No, there was once a time in his life when he could wander the hallways of the great hive he and many others now called home without making a complete ass of himself.  But that time in his life seemed to have run out quite suddenly.

The shit part of it was that everyone noticed.  It had gotten to the point where they would glance at him from the corners of their annoyingly intrusive eyes, just waiting for the other shoe to drop.  And Karkat would glare back at all of them, maybe even snap few choice words for them— _What? You suddenly realize the superior draw of my person and can’t stand to look away? Find something useful to do with your life; you keep staring at me like that, my think pan might liquefy because of second-hand stupidity. Fuck off._

Then, if the spectators were patient—the time tended to vary—eventually, John would show up.

He’d come zooming or hovering into the space, depending on his mood.  And whenever he noticed Karkat, like he did with everybody else, he’d call him out with a friendly hello and then jump right to whatever business he had to take care of.

The amusing part was Karkat’s sudden knee-jerk reaction to John calling his name.  Nine times out of ten, it resulted in him being so startled that he injured himself.

First time he gave himself a papercut.  Then he stubbed his toe.  Karkat was also accumulating several jammed fingers, an overly-abused funny bone and even a mild concussion from when he slipped and fell.

No one would say anything.  But everyone was laughing.

Even Gamzee was chuckling.  Which made Karkat furious and led him to confront his Moirail.

“Is there something that I need to know?” he demanded angrily, kicking an empty bottle of Faygo across the room.  “Seriously.  If I ever encounter Past Me again, I will tear him out of the fabric of space and time for coming up with such a bulge-sucking idea like putting us all together in one hive.  What the fuck was I thinking?  What the hell is everyone’s problem!”

Gamzee just laid his head back and laughed.

“Calm yo-self, bro.  You got too much twisted up in yo motherfuckin’ think pan.  Come here and take a minute for a feelings jam.  It’ll do motherfuckin’ miracles for you, I know it will.”

“Fuck that,” Karkat grumbled.  “I’m not in fucking emotional turmoil, I just want to know what the hell is the matter with this hive.  Maybe that curse is in a latency phase and has reversed all its shit onto me.”

“Nah, that ain’t it,” Gamzee said. 

“Well, I’m going to find out what it is and fix it.  I can’t deal with this humiliation anymore.”

“Good luck, bro.  Let me know when you find out.”

Karkat departed Gamzee’s room in a huff, almost crashing into Tavros on his way out.  He sidestepped the boy and ignored the stuttered apology.

Of course, Karkat wasn’t a _complete_ dumbfuck.  He knew enough to realize the source of his troubles.  Anybody with the attention span of a wriggler could see that he was always unsettled by John’s presence.  And Karkat could recognize that it was because he had feelings for the guy.

But he didn’t know what those desires leaned towards.  Sure, he wanted to be near to John.  But after getting close…then fucking what?

Sure, he knew of many things they could possibly do together, from one end of the concupiscent spectrum to the other.  But Karkat had no idea which of those things were actually complementary to his wants.

Deep into the matter, he burrowed, trying to root out just what it was he needed to get over this mess when a voice rang out behind him.

“Hey, Karkat!”

_BAM!_

Right into the corner he was rounding.

Karkat teetered on his unsteady feet for a moment before falling back on his own ass hard enough to send shocks up his spine and render himself mute for a few moments; his usual string of curse words were swallowed in the clench of distraught nerves.

He curled up into himself and put his hands over his forehead, right as John flew over, babbling apologies and questions.

“My gog, are you alright? Come on, Karkat, sit up, lemme see….”

Karkat batted John’s hands away repeatedly and tried to tell him to fuck off, but it only came out as a voiceless rasp.  Eventually, John got his fingers around Karkat’s wrists and tugged them away from his forehead.

Karkat opened his watering eyes and watched as John’s blue-blue gaze glanced over the injury on his forehead.

“Ouch, you got yourself pretty good there,” he said, his smile twisting in a sympathetic grimace.  “Not bleeding, but there’s a mark.  You’ll probably bruise.”

“Oh, great,” Karkat coughed.

John grinned at him.

And then leaned forward and kissed his forehead.

In that split second, Karkat only had the dry press of lips to his brow, the little nudge of John’s nose at his hair and the eased grip of fingers around his wrists.  Now he was just gaping, slack-jawed at John who was all buck-toothed and goofy smiles.

“It’s a magic trick for helping you feel better,” John was telling him as he let Karkat go.  “Time tested by humans over the centuries.”

“What…bullshit.”  Karkat blinked and shook his head slowly back and forth.

“No, I’m serious!” John insisted.  “See?”  He gingerly ran his fingers over the injury on Karkat’s head, leaning in just a bit to scope it out.  Karkat’s chest tensed up, forcing a shaky exhale from his lungs just as John’s breath smoothed along his brow.

Smelled warm and weird with the lingering pinch of mint from that human toothpaste….

“Don’t you feel less shitty now?”

Karkat found himself nodding dumbly.  He made his best attempt at recovery.  “Whatever, just get out of the way.”  Slowly he got to his feet and rolled his shoulders a bit.  When Karkat looked back over at John, he found a tilted and puzzling expression there.  Like it was the first time all over again.  The Prospit ship just landed on the asteroid; everyone was greeting and the humans were hugging; and then John’s face as he saw Karkat’s after all those years and never knowing….

“What?” Karkat barked, turning pink around the ears.

“Oh!  Uh, nothing.  See you later, Karkat!” And then the Heir took off again, leaving Karkat to stand there, shaking his head and wondering why his hands were jittery. ~~~~

It didn’t stop.  If anything, the incidental injuries just got worse.  Two things were different, though.  First was that most of these embarrassing incidents no longer usually took place where others were lurking.  The other was that John had continually insisted that if he worked his human remedy on Karkat, that there would be less pain.

Karkat had practically every finger kissed at every joint.  The scrape on his palm, the ache in his knee, and the back of his head.  Steadily, it got to the point where he stopped howling in anger at every injury and would just wait in silence for the one second between his hiss of pain and the soft touch of John’s lips.

Every kiss was gentle and quick.  More or less a little bump of lips against Karkat’s skin.  But there were other things that Karkat paid attention to.  Things like how John would touch him when he leaned in for the kiss.  His hands would always both be somewhere on Karkat’s body: his shoulders, his forearms, his hips.  When John kissed that concussion-bump on the back of Karkat’s head, he came from behind and wrapped his arms around him.

Karkat kept the memories of every kiss.  Mulling them over made him quiet and complacent.  He’d review the details and let the lingering warmth pool in his middle like he’d had too much of that Earth hot chocolate to drink.

His favorite one to revisit was when he nicked his chin by accident.  He’d been in the kitchen, trying to assemble some sort of meal with Harley and Kanaya.  They’d left him in charge of chopping onions because the two of them were wimpy lame asses who couldn’t deal with the sting.

So, right as he was about to get to it, John swept in late to help out and Karkat slashed his jaw a bit when the knife jerked in his hand.  Without looking, the girls told him to help Karkat out.

Though Karkat was pretty sure they meant with the food preparation and not what John was doing instead. 

He smiled over at Karkat and leaned in, putting his lips to the little cut that that blossomed in a crimson line on gray flesh.  As he did, one hand rested at the small of Karkat’s back, the other around his hand, steadying the knife. 

John’s eyelashes fluttered, brushing just so against Karkat’s face.  A soft and fleeting touch, gentler than anything Karkat had ever felt.

There was a miniscule pinch of pain at his cut just as John pulled away and started dicing vegetables and Karkat was left to deal with the fact that John had just licked his cut.  Just a little brush of his tongue…a wet touch from between slightly parted lips.  But that was enough to make Karkat flush all the way to his toes.

Karkat was blushing again as he thought about it.  He hadn’t really talked with anyone about what had been happening between him and John.  He wouldn’t want to, really.  Maybe with Gamzee, but he was reluctant to approach his Moirail now that he had a new Matesprit to dawdle around with.

Karkat sighed.  Okay, maybe he really was long overdue for a feelings jam.  If Gamzee wasn’t busy, he was going to ask him for one right then. 

With that decision made, Karkat huffed and departed his room.

Halfway down the hall, already rehearsing the self-assured declaration he was going to give Gamzee, a door opened.

And slammed right into Karkat’s nose.

There was a sickening crunch of cartilage, though it was mostly drowned out by the agonized outcry that issued from Karkat’s throat, followed quickly by a colorful stream.

“GOGDAMMIT YOU FUCKING MOLD-INFESTED-NOOK MUNCHER WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU!  AAARRRGH, I SWEAR I’LL TEAR OFF EACH OF YOUR PHALLANGES AND SHOVE THEM SO FAR UP YOUR ASS THAT YOU’LL  BE VOMITING HANGNAILS FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE!”

“Oh, no, Karkat, I’m so sorry!”

Of COURSE it was JOHN.

“No, no, don’t you touch me!” Karkat yelled, taking a few good steps back with his hand over his nose.  “I can’t deal with your stupid Earth shit ‘magic’ right now!  I am a FOUNTAIN.”

There was a slow trickle of blood leaking down from Karkat’s nose and over his lips.  He spat on the ground and looked around frantically.  It was a new experience for the troll and he didn’t have the knowledge to fix it.  What the hell was he supposed to do?  Let himself bleed out? Walk around with a crooked nose for the rest of forever?

“Karkat, just let me look,” John insisted, moving near to him with his voice calm and his face serious.  “I’m just checking to see how bad the break is.”

“Do NOT,” Karkat growled, “kiss me.  I will break your face if you do.”

“I won’t kiss your nose, calm down,” John said.  He took Karkat’s wrists and gently pulled his hands from his face.

The whole scene was déjà vu for Karkat and if he had any more blood to spare, he’d probably be blushing. 

Instead, most of it was leaking out of his nostrils while his nose was cracked to one side.  John winced at the sight of it.

“I can set it back, but it’ll suck,” he said softly.  “Wanna give it a go?”

Karkat took a deep breath and sighed.

“Fine.  Hurry it up.”

John quirked a sympathetic smile at him then promptly reached over and snapped the shifted cartilage back into place. Karkat ground his teeth together.  The hiss he let out in agony pealed off into a growl and his eyes leaked watery red as he stood there, sniffling blood.

John blinked at him for a second.  Karkat could see the instant that impulse possessed those blue eyes because they glittered in madness.  Then John leaned in and put his lips to Karkat’s cupid’s bow and sucked.

A wet tongue slid out and swiped over the bloodied flesh then dipped lower to catch the drops that had fallen on Karkat’s lips.  Halfway between complete shock and outrage, Karkat opened his mouth and John took the opportunity to push his tongue inside it. 

For a moment there was nothing but the slicked heat of John’s tongue slipping gently along Karkat’s and the tang of the blood shared between them. John came up to put his arms around Karkat’s back and pull him flush to his chest, tilting his head so he could plunge in deeper.

Karkat batted at John’s shoulders, though, pulling his face away so he could get a word in. 

“Dammit, Egbert, stop for just a second.”

John did stop.  For one second.  Then he decided that he’d rather go for the newly exposed flesh at Karkat’s throat, nibbling down his neck.

“F-fuck, stop it!”

“Nnnnnnnnno.”  John giggled.

“I swear to gog John, if you don’t cut it out and give me a chance to talk, I’ll tear your arms from their sockets.”

“You sound like you’re talking just fine,” John said between his gentle bites.  “Just tell me what it is.”

Frustrated and impatient, Karkat shoved John away with all the force he could muster and somehow managed to knock the human on his ass.  He took the opportunity to hold John down, pouncing atop him and pinning his hands above his head.

“Why the fuck are you doing this?” Karkat snarled.

“Because I want to,” John answered simply.

“Want to what?  Drive me insane?  Relish in my perpetuation of self-harm? Are you suddenly interested in eating me; is that why you keep putting your mouth on me?”  Karkat’s eyes were wild with the discording emotions that tumbled about in his blood.  Blood that was smeared a bit at the corner of John’s mouth.  Something that morbid should not have looked so enticing….

John laughed.

“Heh, that last one is pretty close.”

“Nuh-uh, stop it right there.”  Karkat put more on his weight on his pressing palms that held down John’s hands.   “You explain yourself entirely.  Right now.  What’s the reason you keep kissing me all the time?  The _real_ reason, not some bullshit nonsense about Earth magic.”

“Alright, fine.”  John sighed and rolled his eyes, but he was still nursing a pleased grin.  “I started kissing you as a sort of experiment.”

Karkat blinked down at him in silence.  Then, when he couldn’t find any response, John continued.

“I mean, you were always so flustered whenever I simply said hello to you that you kept hurting yourself.  I wasn’t sure whether to feel bad or just laugh because of how ridiculous it was.”

Karkat furrowed his brow, his claws tightening a bit around John’s wrists.

“So that first time—when I kissed your forehead, remember?—it was a bit of an impulse since I didn’t know what else to do and I wanted to do _something_.  And then I thought I’d keep doing it to see what your reaction was like.”

“John,” Karkat said, quite softly for a change as his eyes clenched shut, “all of this bullshit you’ve been putting me through has just been some personal _experiment_ for you?”

“Well, yeah, that’s what they usually call it,” John said.  “Sexual experimentation.  Though it wasn’t really sexual, I suppose.”

“I think the part where you put your tongue in my mouth qualifies,” Karkat growled.

“Oh, yeah, right, guess so.”  John grinned and actually made this little happy wiggle underneath Karkat’s body.  The movement made the troll tense. 

“Fine.  Now you have thirty seconds to tell me why I shouldn’t tear you a new one for treating me like some sort of test subject.”

“Oh, no, Karkat!” John’s expression suddenly shifted from its happy grinning to one of distress.  “It may have started out that way but after like the third time, I just did it because you made that face every time I kissed you.”

“What face?” Karkat demanded.

“The one that looks like this.”

John’s lips opened just a bit and his gaze turned hazy, like he was staring into some far-off fantasy.  But at the same time, he was staring Karkat right in the eyes, looking soft and passive and _dear jegus so pailable_.

“I never made that face!” Karkat argued, suddenly letting go of John’s hands and sitting up.  There was heat rising from his neck all the way to the tips of his ears.

“You did!  You made it every single time!” John followed him to a more upright position.  “And I…I like it a lot.”

Karkat’s eyes widened and he took a long inhale, unable to look John in the face anymore.

“You do realize what you just said is probably the single most embarrassing fucking thing in the world,” Karkat muttered.

“But you get it, right?”  John reached for Karkat’s hands and squeezed them gently, dipping his head to try and catch his gaze. “It wasn’t just some pointless prank.”

“Then why didn’t you just tell me this sooner?” Karkat snapped.  “You’re a huge bone bulge, you know that?”

“Yeah, I know,” John grinned.  “It’s part of being a good pranker.”

“Well quit pranking and be serious,” Karkat said.

“I’m seriously red for you.”  John beamed.  Karkat did his best impression of a beet.  “That’s how you say it, right?”

“Yes, shut up.”  Karkat put a hand in his face and pushed him away so he could get to his feet.

“Wait, where are you—”

“John, _shut up_.”  Karkat held out his hand to him and huffed a small sigh, looking down at his feet.  “Come on.  You made me wait long enough.”

 

Sitting on John’s lap was actually really comfortable, so Karkat went right back to it.  They sat together on John’s bed in the muted glow of lamplight, silent and unaware of anything else.  Not the thrum of the air vents or the steady click of the second hand as it ticked away the moments they marveled at one another.  Slow glances and skating touches.

Karkat found his whole body trembling.  The fabric of his shirt smoothed over his skin as John pulled it over his head. Pale fingers touched just as reverently as John’s tangible gaze swept over Karkat.  Digits with those cut-back nails circled the indents where Karkat’s grub legs once were, on either side of him.

“Your body is different,” John observed quietly, his fingers moving to trace low spots on Karkat’s pectorals.  “Different from mine.”

“How?” Karkat asked, shifting his hips a bit so he could kneel and straddle John’s lap.  “Let me see.”  He reached for John’s shirt and steadily pulled it off.  Made sense why John was touching Karkat at that place on his chest; John had something in that corresponding location.

“What are these?” Karkat asked.  “What’s the function?”  He curled his claws gently around John’s side and pressed at his nipples with his thumbs.

“No function, actually,” John chuckled.  “But…that actually does feel really nice.”

Karkat spared a glance to John’s face, catching the shadowed flush on those pale cheeks.  So he continued to rub his thumbs in little circles, take care to not scratch the sensitive flesh with his talons.

Impulse struck him and Karkat bent until his lips wrapped around one of the pinkish nubs, tongue flicking out over it.  John made a noise Karkat had never heard from him before. But it was low and keening and definitely something he wanted to hear again.  So he laved the same attention to the other nipple.

“And this,” Karkat murmured against John’s sternum as he touched a finger to the indent of John’s bellybutton.  “What’s this?”

“It’s like these,” John answered just as softly, touching the divots in Karkat’s side.  “Not exactly, but close enough.”

Karkat withdrew himself to look into John’s eyes.  He was making that face, the one he demonstrated earlier when they were in the hallway.  Karkat wondered if he was making the same face.  John’s version was smiling a little and his blue eyes were absolutely sparkling.

Karkat took an unsteady breath and then shifted closer, putting his arms around John’s shoulders.  When he neared his face to John’s, he nudged away John’s attempt to kiss him with his forehead, whispering, “Wait.”

The bruised bridge of Karkat’s nose touched John’s jawline and he tilted his face until cheekbone met with soft lips.  The gentle feathers of dark lashes touched, brushing against John’s cheek.  Once…twice Karkat blinked while his fingers stroked the knobbed line of John’s throat.

Under Karkat’s fingers, John’s breath hitched.  He wound his arms around Karkat’s waist and held tight without pulling him closer and breaking the secret gentleness they were sharing.

“Karkat,” John said slowly, “Let me kiss you.”

And he did.  This kiss wasn’t quick and fleeting like all the others.  And it was to Karkat’s lips, his tongue, his fangs that scraped against those adorkable teeth in John’s head.  John’s hands stroked down and up along Karkat’s back, scratching at the curve of spine every now and again. 

These kisses were _really_ magic.  Those other ones couldn’t even compare. 

It was unnatural how just the touch of John’s tongue, a slide of wet muscle along the roof of Karkat’s mouth, could send the troll reeling.  He felt like he actually would go backwards if John’s arms weren’t holding him so surely.

He barely even registered when there was finally no clothing between the two of them.  Though the startled look on John’s face at seeing Karkat’s bulge definitely gave him pause.

“Different, remember?” Karkat muttered, embarrassed.

“Definitely.”  John lowered his hand to the red tendrils like he were offering his fingers for a small animal to sniff.  The slick curls of flesh immediately twined around John’s digits in slow spirals.  Karkat clenched his fingers into John’s shoulders and his head fell back, moaning.

“So sensitive,” John marveled under his breath, kissing the tip of Karkat’s chin.  Gently, he took his fingers from the pulsing coils and slid them lower, another surprised expression rising to his face as he touched the spread and dripping lips of Karkat’s nook.

“Definitely very different,” he said again.  “But so perfect.”

“John,” Karkat said, putting his forehead against John’s, “Please don’t hurt me.”

“What?  Why would I ever?” John tightened the arm around Karkat’s waist and kissed his lips again.  Slow and soft and wet.

“You idiot,” Karkat said in a breath against John’s mouth.  “Do you know what it means for a troll to ask for pity from another?”

It took John a moment, but eventually his eyes lit up in realization and he smiled.

“You know how I said I thought it was amusing when you’d hurt yourself before?” John asked, tracing his finger in a delicate circle around the circumference of Karkat’s nook.

“Y-yes,” Karkat mumbled, punctuated with a sharp inhale as John felt his way to dripping orifice and pressed in shallowly.

“It was only cute when you weren’t seriously hurt,” John said.  “I don’t ever want to cause you pain.”  He kissed the bashed-up skin on the bridge of Karkat’s nose—one of those stupid but happy kisses—and grinned.  “Do you trust me not to hurt you?”

Kartkat breathed slowly and flicked his gaze back and forth between John’s eyes.  Then he looked down to where John’s strange human-bulge was, long and curved and leaking white at the tip.

So strange.

Karkat’s red tendrils reached for it and wrapped gently, causing that contented grin on John’s face to slip into parted lips and begging eyes.

“I do,” Karkat muttered.  “Why do you think I let you get me into such a vulnerable state?”

There was already a little puddle of reddish fluid hiding beneath their tangled legs as Karkat rose and steadily lowered himself onto John’s erection.

It was thick and reached deeper than Karkat expected, stretching him like he hadn’t really braced himself for.

“Ouch,” he muttered.  “That actually does hurt.”

“Oh, gog, I’m so sorry,” John said, his teeth scraping over his bottom lip.  “You feel…really good, though.”

“You do too,” Karkat assured him.  “Just…let me….”

“Yeah, it’s fine….”

They stayed still for a while, John’s arms going around Karkat’s waist and his forehead pressing to the nape of Karkat’s neck.

“I don’t,” a sad chuckle broke through, “I don’t think I’ll last very long, anyway.”

“And I will?”

Karkat’s bulge-fingers wrapped around the base of John’s cock and squeezed just a bit before he braced himself and started moving.

The overwhelming heat and slide of tender parts in precious places made the two vocal, moaning and gasping.  Over time, Karkat stopped wincing in pain and eventually let the groans descend into throaty hums and whispered curses in pleasure.

Something fiery and twisting curled over on itself again and again in Karkat’s insides, becoming more and more tense with every dip of his hips.  His bulge twitched around John’s erection in mounting pleasure, causing the human to buck and gasp.

“John, I need…aaauhh…fuck, I need a bucket, now!”

“No way,” John said, leaning to suck at the sensitive juncture between jaw and throat.  “I can’t stop….”

“John, it’s going to get _everywhere_ ,” Karkat protested, his fangs clamping down on his bottom lip and drawing blood.

John touched his lips to Karkat’s ear.

“So let it,” he whispered.

Karkat’s muscles clenched and he cried out, a flood of hot red pouring from him and soaking John’s lap. 

With a broken moan, John came, pinning Karkat to his chest just as tightly as the squeeze of Karkat’s nook and bulge around him.

When the frantic breaths between them both settled and they slid comfortably back into kissing, John pulled himself from Karkat and gently pushed him back on the bed.  Karkat broke the kiss and reached down, smearing the soaking streaks of his own genetic material from John’s thighs.  He sighed as he rubbed his fingers together.

“See?  I told you.”

“Ah, I don’t care,” John said, leaning to kiss one of Karkat’s horns.  “It was kinda hot, actually.”

“Egbert, you suck the blood out of my nose and now you’re telling me you like being drenched in my nook juice?”  Karkat raised an eyebrow, blush still steady on his cheeks.  “What kind of sick kinks are you nursing?”

“It’s just you,” John said, grinning dumbly.  “Love you and love all your grossness and stupidity and emotional nonsense.”

“Yeah, well,” Karkat grumbled, looking offside, “your disgusting tendencies are rather pitiable too.”

“Wanna go clean up now?”

“No, I’d rather stew on a matress soaked in my own pail slime.  Just for that, you have to carry me.”

“Happily done.”

John lifted Karkat up in his arms and hovered above the bed, pressing his lips to Karkat’s mouth in another real, magical kiss.


End file.
